Super Mega Baseball 4 Cannot play game with specific friends

me and a few friends bought SMB 4 on xbox recently. i can play with 3 friends no problem but for whatever reason our 4th friend cannot play with us. 

He is able to accept our invites and join the party but playing an exhibition or any other thing will not work. he will be stuck in the main menu while the rest of us move to thee team select menu.

We checked our nat types and we are all open nat types as well as we have tested doing 1 v 1s where each of us try to play against him and we all run into the same issue of being stuck in the main menu while he is in the team select screen.